dag
/dæɡ/ noun, verb, interjection
Forms dags dagging dagged
- noun A hanging end or shred, in particular a long pointed strip of cloth at the edge of a piece of clothing, or one of a row of decorative strips of cloth that may ornament a tent, booth or fairground.
- noun A dangling lock of sheep’s wool matted with dung.
- verb To shear the hindquarters of a sheep in order to remove dags or prevent their formation.
- verb (transitive) To cut or slash the edge of a garment into dags
- verb (obsolete, or dialectal) To sully; to make dirty; to bemire.
- noun A skewer.
- noun A spit, a sharpened rod used for roasting food over a fire.
- noun (obsolete) A dagger; a poniard.
- noun (obsolete) A kind of large pistol.
- noun The unbranched antler of a young deer.
- verb (transitive) To skewer food, for roasting over a fire.
- interjection (US, informal) Expressing shock, awe or surprise; used as a general intensifier.
- noun (Australia slang, derogatory) One who dresses unfashionably or without apparent care about appearance; someone who is not cool; a dweeb or nerd.
- noun (Australia slang, New Zealand, obsolete) An odd or eccentric person; someone who is a bit strange but amusingly so.
- noun A misty shower; dew.
- verb (UK, dialect) To be misty; to drizzle.
- noun (graph theory) A directed acyclic graph; an ordered pair (V,E) such that E is a subset of some partial ordering relation on V.
Synonyms
daglock taglock dagging dung tag dirtball scruffbag slob Dag sandwich dekagram decagram dkg jag
Etymology
From Middle English dagge, of uncertain (probably Germanic) origin, cognate with (Middle) Dutch dag, dagge, dagh. The sense "dangling lock of wool, matted with dung" (originally from the dialect of Kent) is also termed "daglock" (derived from the "hanging end" sense of "dag") or "daggle-lock" and some sources consider the sense a shortening of that longer word rather than a mere evolution of the "hanging end" sense.
From Old French dague (from Old Occitan dague, of uncertain origin, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *daca (“Dacian knife”), from the Roman province Dacia (roughly modern Romania); the ending is possibly the faintly pejorative -ard suffix, as in poignard (“dagger”)); cognate with dagger.
N-less (or nonnasal) variant of dang, a euphemism for damn.
Perhaps a back-formation from daggy, or, a specialised sense of British dialect dag, a daring feat amongst boys.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A dagger; a poniard. [Obs.] Johnson.
- noun A large pistol formerly used. [Obs.]
- noun A misty shower; dew. [Obs.]
- noun A loose end; a dangling shred.
Etymology [Cf. F. dague, LL. daga, D. dagge (fr. French); all prob. fr. Celtic; Cf. Gael. dag a pistol, Armor. dag dagger, W. dager, dagr, Ir. daigear. Cf. Dagger.]
Etymology [Of Scand. origin; cf. Sw. dagg, Icel. dögg. sq. root71. See Dew.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “dag”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details